Education

If anything be necessary to be learned, of the holy Scripture we may learn it. If falsehood shall be reproved, thereof we may gather wherewithal. If anything is to be corrected and amended, if there need any exhortation or consolation, of the Scripture we may well learn. In the Scriptures are the fat pastures of the soul; therein is no venomous meat, no unwholesome thing; they are the very dainty and pure feeding. He who is ignorant shall find there what he should learn. He who is a perverse sinner shall there find his damnation, to make him to tremble for fear. He who labours to serve God shall find there his glory, and the promissions of eternal life, exhorting him more diligently to labour.… Here all manner of persons—men, women, young, old, learned, unlearned, rich, poor, priests, laymen, lords, ladies, officers, tenants, and mean men, virgins, wives, widows, lawyers, merchants, artificers, husbandmen, and all manner of persons of what estate or condition soever they be—may in this book learn all things that they ought to believe, what they ought to do, and what they should not do, as well concerning Almighty God, as also concerning themselves and all other.

In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.

True evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant, but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love. It dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those who injure it; prays for those who persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. The persecution, suffering and anxiety that befalls it for the sake of the truth of the Lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.